Archives For Susan Crawford

Susan Crawford recently received the OneCommunity Broadband Hero Award for being a “tireless advocate for 21st century high capacity network access.” In her recent debate with Geoffrey Manne and Berin Szoka, she emphasized that there is little competition in broadband or between cable broadband and wireless, asserting that the main players have effectively divided the markets. As a result, she argues (as she did here at 17:29) that broadband and wireless providers “are deciding not to invest in the very expensive infrastructure because they are very happy with the profits they are getting now.” In the debate, Manne countered by pointing to substantial investment and innovation in both the wired and wireless broadband marketplaces, and arguing that this is not something monopolists insulated from competition do. So, who’s right?

The first shows the top 25 investors that are nonfinancial companies, and guess who comes in 1st, 2nd, 10th, 13th, and 17th place? None other than AT&T, Verizon Communications, Comcast, Sprint Nextel, and Time Warner, respectively.

And when the table is adjusted by removing non-energy companies, the ranks become 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 9th. In fact, cable and telecom combined to invest over $50.5 billion in 2012.

This high level of investment by supposed monopolists is not a new development. The Progressive Policy Institute’s 2012 Report,Investment Heroes: Who’s Betting on America’s Future?indicates that the same main players have been investing heavily for years. Since 1996, the cable industry has invested over $200 billion into infrastructure alone. These investments have allowed 99.5% of Americans to have access to broadband – via landline, wireless, or both – as of the end of 2012.

There’s more. Not only has there been substantial investment that has increased access, but the speeds of service have increased dramatically over the past few years. The National Broadband Map data show that by the end of 2012:

Landline service ≧ 25 megabits per second download available to 81.7% of households, up from 72.9% at the end of 2011 and 58.4% at the end of 2010

Landline service ≧ 100 megabits per second download available to 51.5% of households, up from 43.4% at the end of 2011 and only 12.9% at the end of 2010

≧ 1 gigabit per second download available to 6.8% of households, predominantly via fiber

Fiber at any speed was available to 22.9% of households, up from 16.8% at the end of 2011 and 14.8% at the end of 2010

Landline broadband service at the 3 megabits / 768 kilobits threshold available to 93.4% of households, up from 92.8% at the end of 2011

Mobile wireless broadband at the 3 megabits / 768 kilobits threshold available to 94.1% of households , up from 75.8% at the end of 2011

Access to mobile wireless broadband providing ≧ 10 megabits per second download has grown to 87%, up from 70.6 percent at the end of 2011 and 8.9 percent at the end of 2010

Landline broadband ≧ 10 megabits download was available to 91.1% of households

This leaves only one question: Will the real broadband heroes please stand up?

Over at Forbes Berin Szoka and I have a lengthy piece discussing “10 Reasons To Be More Optimistic About Broadband Than Susan Crawford Is.” Crawford has become the unofficial spokesman for a budding campaign to reshape broadband. She sees cable companies monopolizing broadband, charging too much, withholding content and keeping speeds low, all in order to suppress disruptive innovation — and argues for imposing 19th century common carriage regulation on the Internet. Berin and I begin (we expect to contribute much more to this discussion in the future) to explain both why her premises are erroneous and also why her proscription is faulty. Here’s a taste:

Things in the US today are better than Crawford claims. While Crawford claims that broadband is faster and cheaper in other developed countries, her statistics are convincingly disputed. She neglects to mention the significant subsidies used to build out those networks. Crawford’s model is Europe, but as Europeans acknowledge, “beyond 100 Mbps supply will be very difficult and expensive. Western Europe may be forced into a second fibre build out earlier than expected, or will find themselves within the slow lane in 3-5 years time.” And while “blazing fast” broadband might be important for some users, broadband speeds in the US are plenty fast enough to satisfy most users. Consumers are willing to pay for speed, but, apparently, have little interest in paying for the sort of speed Crawford deems essential. This isn’t surprising. As the LSE study cited above notes, “most new activities made possible by broadband are already possible with basic or fast broadband: higher speeds mainly allow the same things to happen faster or with higher quality, while the extra costs of providing higher speeds to everyone are very significant.”

Even if she’s right, she wildly exaggerates the costs. Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Crawford claims that slow downloads (compared to other countries) could cost the U.S. $3 trillion/year in lost productivity from wasted time spent “waiting for a link to load or an app to function on your wireless device.” This intentionally sensationalist claim, however, rests on a purely hypothetical average wait time in the U.S. of 30 seconds (vs. 2 seconds in Japan). Whatever the actual numbers might be, her methodology would still be shaky, not least because time spent waiting for laggy content isn’t necessarily simply wasted. And for most of us, the opportunity cost of waiting for Angry Birds to load on our phones isn’t counted in wages — it’s counted in beers or time on the golf course or other leisure activities. These are important, to be sure, but does anyone seriously believe our GDP would grow 20% if only apps were snappier? Meanwhile, actual econometric studies looking at the productivity effects of faster broadband on businesses have found that higher broadband speeds are not associated with higher productivity.

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So how do we guard against the possibility of consumer harm without making things worse? For us, it’s a mix of promoting both competition and a smarter, subtler role for government.

Despite Crawford’s assertion that the DOJ should have blocked the Comcast-NBCU merger, antitrust and consumer protection laws do operate to constrain corporate conduct, not only through government enforcement but also private rights of action. Antitrust works best in the background, discouraging harmful conduct without anyone ever suing. The same is true for using consumer protection law to punish deception and truly harmful practices (e.g., misleading billing or overstating speeds).

A range of regulatory reforms would also go a long way toward promoting competition. Most importantly, reform local franchising so competitors like Google Fiber can build their own networks. That means giving them “open access” not to existing networks but to the public rights of way under streets. Instead of requiring that franchisees build out to an entire franchise area—which often makes both new entry and service upgrades unprofitable—remove build-out requirements and craft smart subsidies to encourage competition to deliver high-quality universal service, and to deliver superfast broadband to the customers who want it. Rather than controlling prices, offer broadband vouchers to those that can’t afford it. Encourage telcos to build wireline competitors to cable by transitioning their existing telephone networks to all-IP networks, as we’ve urged the FCC to do (here and here). Let wireless reach its potential by opening up spectrum and discouraging municipalities from blocking tower construction. Clear the deadwood of rules that protect incumbents in the video marketplace—a reform with broad bipartisan appeal.

In short, there’s a lot of ground between “do nothing” and “regulate broadband like electricity—or railroads.” Crawford’s arguments simply don’t justify imposing 19th century common carriage regulation on the Internet. But that doesn’t leave us powerless to correct practices that truly harm consumers, should they actually arise.

At today’s Open Commission Meeting, the FCC is set to consider two apparently forthcoming Notices of Proposed Rulemaking that will shape the mobile broadband sector for years to come. It’s not hyperbole to say that the FCC’s approach to the two issues at hand — the design of spectrum auctions and the definition of the FCC’s spectrum screen — can make or break wireless broadband in this country. The FCC stands at a crossroads with respect to its role in this future, and it’s not clear that it will choose wisely.

Chairman Genachowski has recently jumped on the “psychology of abundance” bandwagon, suggesting that the firms that provide broadband service must (be forced by the FCC to) act as if spectrum and bandwidth were abundant (they aren’t), and not to engage in activities that are sensible responses to broadband scarcity. According to Genachowski, “Anything that depresses broadband usage is something that we need to be really concerned about. . . . We should all be concerned with anything that is incompatible with the psychology of abundance.” This is the idea — popularized by non-economists and ideologues like Susan Crawford — that we should require networks to act as if we have “abundant” capacity, and enact regulations and restraints that prevent network operators from responding to actual scarcity with business structures, rational pricing or usage rules that could in any way deviate from this imaginary Nirvana.

This is rhetorical bunk. The culprit here, if there is one, isn’t the firms that plow billions into expanding scarce capacity to meet abundant demand and struggle to manage their networks to maximize capacity within these constraints (dubbed “investment heroes” by the more reasonable lefties at the Progressive Policy Institute). Firms act like there is scarcity because there is — and the FCC is largely to blame. What we should be concerned about is not the psychology of abundance, but rather the sources of actual scarcity.

The FCC faces a stark choice—starting with tomorrow’s meeting. The Commission can choose to continue to be the agency that micromanages scarcity as an activist intervenor in the market — screening-out some market participants as “too big,” and scrutinizing every scarcity-induced merger, deal, spectrum transfer, usage cap, pricing decision and content restriction for how much it deviates from a fanciful ideal. Or it can position itself as the creator of true abundance and simply open the spectrum spigot that it has negligently blocked for years, delivering more bandwidth into the hands of everyone who wants it.

If the FCC chooses the latter course — if it designs effective auctions that attract sellers, permitting participation by all willing buyers — everyone benefits. Firms won’t act like there is scarcity if there is no scarcity. Investment in networks and the technology that maximizes their capacity will continue as long as those investments are secure and firms are allowed to realize a return — not lambasted every time they try to do so.

If, instead, the Commission remains in thrall to self-proclaimed consumer advocates (in truth, regulatory activists) who believe against all evidence that they can and should design industry’s structure (“big is bad!”) and second-guess every business decision (“psychology of abundance!”), everyone loses (except the activists, I suppose). Firms won’t stop acting like there’s scarcity until there is no scarcity. And investment will take a backseat to unpopular network management decisions that represent the only sensible responses to uncertain, over-regulated market conditions.